As part of the ongoing consultation into SEND reform, we responded to the Department for Education’s consultation on changes to Education Otherwise Than at School alongside a letter to the Secretary of State for Education calling for the experiences of PDA families to be heard. The consultation closed on Friday 18 September.
EOTAS is the support some children and young people get when school isn’t the right place for their special educational provision, as set out in an EHCP (Education Health and Care Plan). Without this provision, many PDA children would struggle to access an education in a traditional educational setting.
Around 16,000 children and young people are currently on EOTAS packages, and over a third of those (34.5%) have autism as their primary need.
We previously contributed to the Disabled Children’s Partnership comprehensive response to the government’s consultation on SEND reforms, and we fully support their position which represents a range of views on how these reforms will impact families of disabled children. However, given how crucial EOTAS is to many PDA children, we felt it was vital to provide an additional response to give a voice to the specific concerns of PDA families.
As part of our consultation response, we provided survey data and quotes from children to show that:
- PDAers form a significant proportion of those benefiting from an EOTAS package
- Many PDAers find education extraordinarily challenging: overwhelming, unpredictable and unsafe
- EOTAS can remove the features of conventional education that make learning inaccessible
- Without access to EOTAS, many PDA children would be left without a meaningful education
- There is often a significant delay in EOTAS being arranged, often over a year
- For many PDAers, EOTAS is a positive experience.
Improvements to the EOTAS system are needed, but the government must ensure that any reforms are underpinned by an understanding of PDA children and families’ lived experience.
Our letter to the Secretary of State for Education summarises the actions we are calling on the Government to take with respect to proposed SEND reforms, which you can read below:
1. We welcome SEND reforms that enable faster needs-led support through standardised approaches and free up resource for complex needs, which is likely to include many PDA children.
2. The inclusion of PDA children cannot be measured by their attendance and attainment in mainstream education. Instead, measures are needed to assess whether a child is thriving and learning. A new approach to these complex children will support partnerships with parents by addressing the culture of parental blame.
3. Reforms must ensure specialist support is flexible and informed by specific expertise in the needs of children with complex and less well understood profiles such as PDA. This should include explicit pathways for those whose education is not currently being met in school settings to ensure they can benefit. Interventions for PDA children need to address underlying anxiety and demand sensitivity, rather than managing behaviour.
4. Specialist expertise needs to be developed alongside more general awareness of PDA for educators so that professionals can identify a PDA child earlier and understand the different approaches that are needed.
5. Schools must be held to account for performance. Many Local Authorities are currently failing in their duties to support the educational needs of PDA children.